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- Part 5
Delving into directionality to create 'Spirographic' brushes
This is our fifth exploration into the Paint Engine in
Adobe Photoshop 7. Since so many of the remaining
parameters in this program are self-explanatory, I
thought we'd break away for a while from simple
feature explanations to a more practical look at what
you can do with some of the Paint Engine's dynamics-
-in this case directionality for creating geometric and
"Spirographic" line effects.
The goal of this particular tutorial is to work with
various directionality settings in Photoshop 7 to create
two sorts of effects: intertwining lines and
"Spirographic" patterns, similar to what you could
produce with a Hasbro Spirograph game. That is,
effects that produce repeating, overlapping lines like
meshes. This needn't be applied simply to lines,
however. You can use this same trick on ore complex
brushes for producing repeating, but shifting patterns
out of any brush tip shape, including images. In the
end, we'll wind up with a paint brush that can
accomplish this effect interactively by simple freehand drawing or through path stroking.
Creating line-effect brushes
Since the goal of this tutorial is to produce brushes that create line effects, we'll begin with the creation of a
single-pixel-wide brush. But, again, you can use any brush tip shape for this process. (Later in this tutorial we'll
look at more "Spirographic" brushes as well.)
Open Photoshop, and create a new document. Switch to the Single-Column Marquee Tool, and click somewhere in
your canvas. Then choose Edit > Stroke. In the dialog that pops up, enter a one-pixel stroke width using black as
the stroke color.
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- Deselect your column (Command-D Macintosh, Control-D Windows), and you should be left with a simple vertical
line.
Now switch to the Paint Brush Tool and then choose Edit > Define Brush. This will use all of the visible pixels in
your image to create a brush tip shape.
Now open up your Brushes palette. The currently selected brush should be the one you just defined. If you try to
use it at this stage, you'll get sort of a scrolling effect. But we want to take this a step farther.
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- So click on the dynamic in the Brushes palette called "Shape Dynamics." Turn everything off, and then switch the
Angle setting to "Direction." (Leave the Jitter at 0.)
Now you can draw with it at this point, but the result isn't too pretty.
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- So, in the Brushes palette, click on the Brush Tip Shape option. Here you can do two things to improve the look of
your brush. First, you can set the spacing to 1,000 percent, which will give your strokes a much more delicate
appearance.
And you can also switch the Diameter down to about half of what you started with to produce lines that use a
stroke less than one pixel wide.
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- And, finally, if you want to cover a wide area with your line-effect brush, you can select the Scattering dynamic.
Set it to "Both Axes," and adjust the amount of scatter to about 400 percent. Set the "Count" to 8 or so. Now when
you draw on your canvas with a couple of curly strokes, you quickly wind up with an image full of web-like,
intersecting lines.
Very nice. But maybe a bit less mesh-like than what you had hoped for. This is owing to the fact that we used a
single-line brush tip shape in our initial brush tip shape creation phase. But we can apply limitless variations to this.
For example, instead of a simple line, we could create an X-shaped brush tip to produce this effect with a single
stroke. (Of course, you'd want Scattering turned off for this.)
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- Or a double-X for this effect.
Getting 'Spirographic'
Get the idea? The more complex the initial brush tip shape, the more complex the geometric effects you can create
quickly. But for even more of a Spirographic effect, create your brush tip shape using circles. You can do this
several ways. The easiest is simply to draw a circle with the circular Marquee tool, and then stroke it, as we did
with our original line brush. Then duplicate this layer to create double or triple intersecting circles.
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- Now, making sure that only the layers containing your circles are visible, choose Edit > Define Brush. And, again,
apply your Brush Tip Shape options to make the circles more delicate, and apply your directionality setting in the
Shape Dynamics parameter. You may or may not want to adjust spacing, but that's up to you.
And you will hopefully wind up with a brush that can create an effect like this.
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- Or this.
Pretty fancy, eh?
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- Working with geometric brushes
Of course, there are multiple ways you can work these sorts of brushes into your production. I think the first set of
brushes we worked on are geared well for freehand drawing. That is, you can scatter them freely to produce
complex, web-like, irregular strokes. The second set, however, seems better geared toward stroking paths, which is
what I've obviously done with the previous two examples.
This is a fairly simple procedure. Save the brush you have created. You can do this in the Brushes palette by
selecting the flyaway menu on the top right and choosing "New Brush." This will save not only your brush tip shape,
but also any dynamics you've applied to it.
Make sure that you then select your newly saved brush in the Brushes palette.
Now create the shape you want to stroke. You can do this semi-freehand using one of the path tools, or you can
load up a shape using one of the Shape tools. If you do use one of the shape tools, make sure the "Paths" option is
selected up in the Tool Options palette, as shown below.
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- Now draw your shape onto your canvas. When you're done, open up the Paths palette, and make sure your path is
selected. Then choose the "Stroke Path" option from the flyaway menu.
When the dialog pops up, choose "Brush" as your stroke, and then hit OK.
Your path will then be stroked using your custom Spirographic brush, and you can go off and impress your friends
and colleagues with the geometric complexity of your work.
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- Painting clouds
I used Photoshop, but any paint program should work.
(Left, cropped from a larger image.)
I start with a ramp like the one on
the right; be careful not to use full
saturation here. Up to your
preference, if you want to make the
background a little more purple.
Start painting with max saturation
and max value a 'peachy' color on a
large default brush (sharp edge,
pressure-sensitive opacity). Quickly
block in the rough shapes where
light would fall on your cloud.
Take special care here (and any time
you're painting something in nature)
to not be too predictable,
symmetrical or regular.
Go down in brush size and do some
more detailed strokes.
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- The shadow color is added, a purple
so dull it's almost gray. Then add
the darker orange/red color
wherever the peach meets the
shadow. Also, normally, clouds will
be brighter at the top so add it at
the base too.
Now the highlight color, a
slightly lighter peach. Use the
finest brush and squiggle it on
wherever there's a left-hand
facing edge of the cloud. Again,
don't be predictable and regular.
We need to soften the right-
hand side edges of all these
squiggles, while trying to keep
the left sides as sharp as
possible. You can use a small
blur brush, or a smear, or simply
paint back the base color into
the highlight.
Go back and forth, adding more
highlight squiggles, softening
some parts, bringing the shadow
color in with a finer brush too in
some places, etc.
On the right is the finished cloud.
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- Here's a cloud similar to one I saw today, around noon, near the horizon, through my office window. The light is
coming not from the side or above, but about 45 degrees or so. This changes where you need to put the highest
values; instead of at the edge of each blob of cloud the highest value ends up pretty much centered. So a different
technique will be more efficient.
Use a similar ramp to the above,
just a bit lighter.
Create a new layer and paint with a
sharp edged brush a value slightly
lighter and less saturated than the
lightest sky color. Darken it a bit at
the bottom.
Turn on 'Preserve Transparency' for
the layer and paint full white with
the airbrush like this. Vary the
brush size quite a lot. The goal is to
get this kind of 'cauliflower' look.
Then add another layer and paint
with a fully opaque sharp edged
brush the original cloud color, like
on the right.
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- Same thing again, switch on
'Preserve Transparency' and paint
white with the airbrush.
Repeat this cycle until the whole
cloud area is filled up. Remember
to try to get the edges of each layer
a little closer in the beginning, and
more widely spaced towards the
end (due to the perspective).
On the right is the finished cloud,
note that you can tweak it very
easily by using 'Curves' on each
layer. I darkened the first layers,
also changed the coloring a
little. Other tweaks included some
added detail on the bottom layer,
and airbrushing more white here
and there.
Of course instead of the airbrush
you could try this with all sharp
edged brushes, for a more painterly
expressive style.
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- Creating a Spiritual City
Jaime Jasso
Award-winning CG artist Jaime Jasso takes us
through the creation of a superbly-integrated
2D environment made almost entirely from
photographic elements, hand-tweaked and
painstakingly retouched in Photoshop to fit
the scene.
My idea behind this painting was to create a
place where the viewer would feel spiritual
peace, but at the same time have a sense that
the place is dangerous. I made this image by
joining more than 70 photos together with
some 100% painted elements too. All the
elements were heavily edited from the original
to be integrated into the composition because I needed them for a specific purpose.
Admittedly, some of the perspectives in the image appear out-of-whack to our critical eyes, but the focus of this
article is to demonstrate how I worked the composition up to this point, despite the corrections that could be made
to make the composition more physically accurate.
Concept Sketches
The idea was born when a friend of mine
returned from Argentina and gave me this cool
postcard of Iguaçu Falls. Inspired by this I
started sketching out this land of waterfalls and
moody jungle. In the first sketch, I considered
including a huge gothic castle connected by
bridges to smaller structures. Then I designed
the look and composition of the image, playing
with the architecture between the waterfalls.
Later, I realized that the scale of the castle was
too big for the falls, because I wanted the landscape to look huge and menacing as well. So I decided to change the
design of the castle for a cluster of smaller temples linked together to build a ‘spiritual city'. In my following
sketches I played with mood and color. I decided to use an overcast and mysterious complexion for the composition
instead of a night shot; otherwise I would lose a lot of the detail in the waterfalls, foliage and temples.
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- Composition
The first step was to set
my working resolution. I
chose to work at about
3500 pixels wide, mainly
because I was working
with images from the
Internet.
Reference Gathering
Atmospheric Effects
I looked for real photos to
use as reference to see
how a gloomy and hazy
outdoor atmosphere
affects the saturation and
shape of elements as they
become more distant.
After studying these
photos, I noticed that
causes faraway shapes to
lose contrast and gain in
brightness. When it came
to working on the image
though, I didn't attempt
to completely render the
faraway elements with
this realistic haziness
because I wanted the shot
clearly defining some of
the distant details. Overall
though, I did try to mimic
this weather as accurately
as in reality except for
one little cheat in the
final image to retain some
of the detail.
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- Architecture
I did a lot of research into the sorts of architecture I was going to work with. Looking to some mosques in
Jerusalem and Turkey I found great references for buildings to make perfectly the architecture I had in mind. I
started a longer search for high resolution photos of mosques and similar architecture. It took me quite a few days
to get all the photos I was going to need.
Waterfalls
In this phase, I also gathered a lot of high-resolution waterfalls photos that I knew I'd need. I found some great
material of the Niagara Falls, and of course Iguaçu Falls, that would help me achieve the desired perspective and
feel.
Finally I managed to gather together a collection of over 150 high resolution images from different websites. Now,
how would I use these photos in my image? Where does each belong? And where can each image blend best with
respect to the others?
Compositing – Natural Environment
I began to create the waterfalls using
almost 20 different photos. I did a lot of
cloning to get the water and falls blend
seamlessly. To get the effect of distance
in the water, I had to scale down some
layers and paint the far distance water
by cloning more water.
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- Once I had the falls done, I began to work on some of the details such as the little foliage islands in the water.
These I manufactured by cloning a small jungle and foliage area in a photo. Later, most of the foliage was
retouched and detailed with extra touches like branches, shadows and special reactions in the area where the
foliage touched the water. Done with this, I had to add the turbulent water buffeting these little foliage islands to
show the water is really being affected by these pieces of land on its way to the falls, completing the integration of
the foliage and water.
Later I created the sky by mixing two layers I found on the net. I desaturated both a little bit and added some
lightness to it, making it clearer and less contrasting. The background mountains were hand-painted. Taking care to
reflect the haze and lightness values of distance, I did the mountain shapes with a solid color that later was
replaced by the correctly-colored gradient. (see image above)
The rear waterfalls where added later, after the city and temples, along some of the steam. It was painted in by
hand to give the effect of a huge amount of water falling and crashing down in to a river that we don't see. (see
image below)
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- Compositing – City and Temples
I then worked with some of the architecture photos,
and started patching together some composites over
the landscape. The foreground tower was something I
didn't have in the original sketches, but the idea came
out when I was looking for appropriate images on the
Internet and found a special photo that gave me the
idea. I modified the shape and color, and removed the
direct sunshine with its hard shadows from the original
photo, so it would fit in the composite.
The temple at the end of the bridge was entirely hand-
painted because I never found a photo with the correct
perspective. I took values from other photos I had
composited there to paint it more accurately.
For the middle-ground city I had to be very careful
about what architecture and micro composition I was
going to use. I selected the photos and began to do
experiments to trial structural arrangements in that
area of the image.
There was clear evidence in the image of the
peculiarities of the original photos I used to build this
middle-ground part of the city. I had to make these
buildings blend in with the overall weather. I
desaturated the colors to push back some of the
temples. I then altered the brightness/contrast and
hue/saturation to make them hazier, as they are further
away from the viewer. I also reduced the contrast
where the sun was hiding behind the clouds and added
a lens flare to help me get the buildings integrating
into the haze of the overall atmosphere.
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- I joined together more and more photos to create the background part of the city. I applied the same techniques to
lighten and lower the contrast of these layers. However, I still had to take some steps to better match these images
with their environment. First I painted the highlights, which was very important because the sun light was coming
from the left. Then, in a fresh layer, I painted rough highlights with colors taken from other layers used for the
middle-ground. Later, I set this layer to the blending mode ‘Color'. So the highlights layer and base building layers
were now filtered through this color layer that was set to be only partially opaque. Thus, the colors in the whole
image were desaturated as part of the effect of distance.
Compositing – Foreground Additions and Haze
To give it a more natural and ‘alive' look, I added three flying birds that I took from a photo, with a small amount of
directional blur to convey the effect of motion.
In the original sketches I had a foreground tree, but with the new foreground tower I thought it less necessary. I
still thought I'd put some branches in to frame the image, but not the whole tree. These branches were hand-
painted, and while it may not be strictly correct, I used a black to brown gradient going down to the thinner
branches. I just wanted to give some translucency to the slender twigs. (see image below)
As the final touch, to give it a generally hazy mood, I added a new layer at the top of my composite that simply had
a white to transparent gradient over it, making the sky and upper elements blend together in the homogenous
weather and atmosphere.
Post-processing
In the post-processing I made a little color correction,
with green being the main color of my palette. I also
added a bit of film grain to give that special
photographic touch.
Final Image
The hand painting and editing used no custom brushes,
and the rest just involved changing opacity, colors,
modes, and resizing. The image was done completely in
Photoshop.
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